The intersection of the right wing blogosphere and popular culture is an endlessly amusing affair. There are seemingly only two roads to hell that these journeys take -- bad writing by soulless creatures denouncing things they don't understand in ways that make George Will's bow tie look hip -- or -- and believe me the former is vastly preferable to the latter -- bad writing by soulless creatures desperately trying to claim things they don't understand as "conservative." Or maybe it is better summarized by the ethos of the execrable site "Big Hollywood" which seems to be 1) Hollywood is horrible, an anti-American blight bent on destroying the society; 2) Hollywood really ought to give us right wingers a chance instead of meanly blackballing us; and 3) did you know much of what Hollywood produces actually reflects secret conservative values. Yeah, well it does get a little confusing to follow and reflects a strange formula -- Savanorola-like denunciations + pity party = right wing triumph.
Recently we've been treated to claims that "Republican is the new punk" -- sorry, no it isn't fuckstick, and I say this as one who was more or less present at the creation, nope, no way -- and then the "25 best conservative movies of the last 25 years" the perfect bookend to the wonderfully absurd "top fifty conservative rock songs." I'm not sure what is more pathetic -- the inability to actually see a work of art (with the caveat that many of these films are "art" only in the loosest sense, see, e.g. "Ghostbusters" or "Forest Gump") as anything more than an affirmation of a political platform or the desperate need to try and commandeer aspects of the culture that just aren't in any way "conservative" - "Bodies" by the Sex Pistols as a glaring for instance. Roy Edroso has a continually great time with this stuff and can skewer it with far more skill than I, but I just couldn't let it pass this time.without weighing in.
The desperate attempt by the "husky dockers" set to be cool is amusing enough. But what I find more striking is the inability to actually see themselves and their ideology as it actually exists today -- this is after all the party of pre-emptive war, of warrantless wiretaps, of torture and extreme rendition, of the market place as a holy thing. Thus, attempts by these militaristic rightists to lay claim to actual small "c" conservative art such as that of Ray Davies is just an abomination. National Review cites "20th Century Man" as one of its own ("The Village Green Preservation Society" would have been a better pick as "conservative art by the way), without noting that the main concern of the song is the nightmare of war -- "napalm, hydrogen bomb, biological warfare" and state sponsored violence -- "don't want to get my self shot down by some trigger happy policeman." It is similarly amusing to have the number one film on the list be the wonderful East German movie "The Lives of Others" selected by a group of people who routinely scoff at civil liberties concerns and who fell into absolute and complete lockstep with the Bush Administration over warrantless wiretapping. (I read this stuff and keep thinking of one of my favorite Billy Bragg lines - "He's a dedicated swallower of fascism.") Anyway, please read the lists and note your favorite anomalous choice -- the righties should feel free,however, to claim Gump, Red Dawn, and anything by the band "Rush." (They can also throw in "Titanic" as a refutation of global warming if they wish.)
